Get Started Faster and Automate More with Puppet Enterprise 3.3

Breadcrumb

With each release of Puppet Enterprise, we want to make it easier for you to get done the work you have to do, so you can move on to the work you want to do. Puppet Enterprise 3.3 delivers enhancements that let you to set up Puppet Enterprise faster and automate (even) more of your IT infrastructure. Plus you can export data collected by Puppet Enterprise to share with your organization, giving more visibility into what’s happening across your IT environment.

We’ve simplified the process of getting nodes under management, expanded the list of tested and supported modules in Puppet Forge, and extended support to additional platforms, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Mac OS X Mavericks. We’ve also polished the user interface of the Puppet Enterprise console so it’s more consistent and easier to work with.

Get Up and Running Faster

We want Puppet Enterprise to be effortless to install, so you spend less time bringing nodes under management and more time actually managing your infrastructure. The new web-based installer walks you through getting the right setup for your environment, and we’ve extended the simplified agent installation method (introduced with release 3.2) to support AIX, Solaris 10 and RHEL 4. We’ve also made manifest ordering enhancements to make it easier to get started with your first puppet run.

Taken together, these changes make it easier than ever for you to install Puppet Enterprise, get a puppet agent deployed to new Linux and Unix nodes, and manage mixed platform environments.

Access New Puppet Enterprise Supported Modules

In the last release, we introduced Puppet Enterprise supported modules, letting you automate common sysadmin tasks without writing Puppet code. These modules have been rigorously tested and validated by Puppet Labs engineers, and verified compatible with the agent operating systems that Puppet Enterprise supports. Now we've extended support to:

VCS Repo module. This module gives you the ability to manage repositories and pull code from version control systems such as Git, allowing you to integrate your VCS with Puppet Enterprise infrastructure and workflow.

Windows ACL module. As part of our continued commitment to making configuration management in Windows as strong as what's available for Linux, we’re now supporting the module that brings access control lists (ACLs) under Puppet management. You can now set permissions for users and groups, and define, write, list, and execute security control, all from Puppet Enterprise.

We’ve also updated the popular F5 (SOAP) module, so you can use Puppet Enterprise to manage various configuration parameters of the F5 BigIP and Viprion load balancer platforms. While F5 isn’t a supported module, its popularity demonstrates how integral these load balancers are to application environments, certainly when it comes to centrally orchestrating more of the application infrastructure.

Automate More, on More Platforms

It’s important to us to support the operating systems that are important to you, and to do it quickly. We’ve now extended support to the following:

Mac OS X Mavericks Agent Support. You can now manage Apple laptops and desktops from the same Puppet Enterprise infrastructure that manages your servers.

Make Your Work Visible

IT automation shouldn’t take place in a vacuum. Now you can export data captured by Puppet Enterprise and import it into the tool of your choice, creating reports for things your team and your boss care about — like which machines you’re monitoring and what’s vulnerable — so you can fix things quickly.

These reports will help you see what to prioritize next, while sharing valuable information with the rest of your team.

Other Goodies

We also snuck in platform and usability enhancements that have a big impact: Puppet master now operates at half the latency and can handle up to 24 percent more agent requests, without dips in performance, so you might see a more responsive console.

The console also looks more readable and, well, better. These changes are more than just window dressing — they’re all about making the console more legible and consistent so you can easily find the data you need, without distractions.

Finally, take a look at Razor, which allows automatic provisioning of hardware that’s newly introduced to an environment. It’s still in tech preview, and we’ve made some performance enhancements, so we’d love you to give it a try — and offer us your feedback.